Captain's Camp Fire Tale
by Unicorn1980
Summary: Stories around the camp fire on Halloween. Fluff, spooky fun, and more fluff. TintinXHaddock (established relationship). Happy Halloween!


Tintin could sense Halloween in the air. As he huddled inside his thick jacket, he inhaled the evening smells of the forest; autumn leaves and woody smoke from the crackling camp fire; sausages cooking over the flames and the sweet smell of the carved pumpkin that was slowly being baked from the inside by a candle. You couldn't have Halloween without a pumpkin, Tintin had insisted to his friends, even if it meant lugging the heavy thing with you on a weekend trip away. The little camp-site they had built smelled homely, despite being so far from Marlinspike Hall. Captain's tobacco smoke drifted around and, when the boy buried his face into the soft curls of white fur, Snowy just smelled like, well, Snowy. The dog didn't need a bath just yet, thankfully. Tintin could even detect the aroma of milky cocoa that was keeping warm in a pan by the fireside.

The afternoon had seen merriment as they hammered in tent pegs, unpacked, then foraged for dry wood. Everyone was excited about the prospect of camping out; this time for the simple fun of being outdoors. There were no crooks to worry about. No-one had been kidnapped. Professor Calculus was delighted to give the group a lecture on the many species of local toadstool - whether they were interested or not. Even Nestor had cracked a smile at the sight of Captain sitting on a log, puffing on his pipe and humouring the fungus lesson whilst carving out the pumpkin's grin with his penknife.

And now, beneath a full October moon, Tintin smiled across the little bonfire at Captain who was turning the sausages in the glow of the fire. Snowy sniffed the air and shifted in his master's lap, whining in anticipation. Tintin rubbed his ears. "Hungry, Snowy?"

"Here, Snowy," Haddock called and tossed a well-cooked sausage in front of the fox terrier.

Snowy sat up, tail wagging as he waited obediently for Tintin to feed him.

"What do you say?" Tintin encouraged his pet.

Snowy barked and the boy smiled, rewarding the dog with the treat and a good stroke on his back. "Good boy, Snowy."

Captain chuckled and sighed. "Ah, this is the life, eh?"

"Wife?" asked Calculus. "Who's wife?"

"_Life!_" Haddock repeated loudly. "For heaven's sake, Cuthbert, I said… oh, just forget it."

"Well, yes," replied Calculus, "but only with a little ketchup."

The others took no notice, used to the Professor's deafness by now. It was far better for the nerves _not _to try to make him understand.

"I can't think of a better way to spend Halloween, Captain," said Tintin.

"Aye, it's good to be out in the fresh air. And no trick or treaters to bother us."

"Cocoa, sir?" Nestor served the drink in tin mugs and passed them around the circle. Haddock thanked the butler and accepted a mug.

Tintin turned a blind eye to the generous shot of whisky that Captain happily tipped into his hot chocolate. He sipped his own drink, enjoying the sweet warmth. Somewhere out in the forest, the hoot of an owl carried through the tops of the evergreens, followed by a rustling in the bushes. Snowy turned his head towards the movement in the foliage and stopped chewing his supper to growl.

"There may not be any trick or treaters out in the wood," said Tintin, "but we are certainly not alone."

"Nature, that's all," replied Haddock as he began putting sizzling sausages into bread rolls. "Don't tell me you're getting jumpy? We haven't even started the camp fire stories yet."

"No, just a little ketchup," Calculus reminded them when the heavy-handed Captain started pouring sauce onto the food.

Tintin laughed softly. "No, not jumpy, Captain." _Not exactly_. More noises in the forest sent a shiver up his spine; the strange cry of a nocturnal creature this time in the trees behind him. Carrying Snowy, he moved to the log beside the Captain, under the pretence of helping him with supper.

"Of course, it wouldn't surprise me if we see a ghost tonight," Haddock added after handing Tintin a hotdog.

The remark surprised him and the boy's hand froze, hotdog an inch from his mouth. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, well, an old forest like this is bound to be haunted, isn't it? I mean, just think of all the dastardly dealings that probably happened here." Haddock met Tintin's wide eyes and grinned. "Oh, don't look so worried, I'm only pulling your chain. Now, how about some _real _ghost stories?"

"Do you know any, sir?" Nestor asked.

Haddock looked astonished. "Do I know any? What a question. Of course I do! You don't think a man sails around the world and back without seeing his share of ghosts, do you?"

Tintin smiled, intrigued. "Perhaps you'd like to go first, then?"

Haddock put down the frying pan and glanced around the circle. "Did you ever hear of the_ Lady Polly_?"

The listeners shook their heads. "No, who is she?"

"A grand passenger ship," Haddock told them. "She set sail from Norway one afternoon, bound for her home port in England, but she never arrived. Oh, they sent a search and rescue party out to look for her, but there was no sign of her. No distress call was ever made, and no shipwrecks reported. Months, even years, passed and still there were no clues to her whereabouts. The ship had disappeared off the face of the Earth, and her crew and passengers, well, they were never heard from again."

"She must have sunk," Tintin suggested.

"Oh, y'think so, do you?" Haddock smirked in the glow of the camp fire. "Then how is it that sailors began to sight _Lady Polly_ out in the Norwegian Sea, fifty years after she vanished? One moment she would be there, out in the fog, drifting silently like a phantom, then gone. A _ghost _ship."

"I've heard of those," Tintin recalled with an unwanted chill. "Ghost ships, I mean. Abandoned ships that drift around the ocean, appearing every now and then."

Haddock nodded. "They can sail unmanned for hundreds of years. But the real mystery is this; what happened to the crew? When I was Captain of the _Karaboudjan_, we sailed those Norwegian waters, and let me tell you, at night it's black out there. Without the ships lights you can't see where the sky ends and the sea begins. It's quiet, black as ink and _cold_. Y'know that sort of cold where you walk around in your coat, but you still feel the ice nipping at your skin? Red cheeks and red noses. You rub your hands and see your breath, and wish you'd put your gloves on before coming out on deck. Ah, you've been there, Tintin, you know what I mean. The point is, it's easy to vanish out there, especially when the fog rolls in, thick as soup and just as wet. The last thing you'd want to happen is a power failure; no engine, no lights, no radio to send an SOS. But that's precisely what happened to the _Karaboudjan_.

"I remember stepping into the radio room to find the lights flickering. One of the lads said the transmitter was playing up. There was definitely something interfering with the signal, and disturbing the ships electrics too. So I sent someone to engineering. That's when it happened. The whir of the engine stopped and the entire ship was plunged into darkness. A complete blackout. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, let alone find my way around the ship. So I shouted to everyone in earshot, _'someone get a torch to the engineer and get that engine back into action!'_

"I was concerned, I'll admit. In conditions like that you're likely to hit something; an iceberg, rocks… another ship. When the engine finally fired back to life, I felt my out onto the deck. The electrics were the last thing to return, and when the bright lights finally chased away the darkness I was faced with a heart stopping fright. The prow of another ship, right there in front me and bearing down on us out of the fog like the jaws of a beast.

"_'Ship to starboard!'_ I yelled, then ran for the bridge. The pilot was already turning the wheel, but we needed more speed. I thrust the telegraph to full ahead. I even rang the bell three times, but the men in the engine room weren't quick enough. That monster of a boat collided right into us. I braced myself for the worst. Struck by a ship that didn't see us in the dark. What speed had they been travelling at? The impact was enough to knock us all around like dice in a box, but in the grand scale of things, it was a mere bump. The _Karaboudjan_ was undamaged, thank God. But still, I sent the signal to the engine room to halt the ship. It was when I got back out on that freezing deck that I realised something. We hadn't seen the other ship in the dark either, and do you know why?"

"Why?" whispered Tintin.

"Because she was dead; without power and adrift. And as she slowly scraped along side us, rusty iron screeching and sparking against steel, I read the name that passed before my eyes. The _Lady Polly_. Of course, I'd never heard of it, not back then. And when you bump into a ship that's adrift or in distress, it's your duty to help."

"You boarded her?" Tintin's blood ran cold at the notion.

"We had to," Haddock replied. "And believe me, lad, there's nothing more creepy than an abandoned ship; dark, cold and silent as the grave, except for the eerie clanging of a pulley somewhere up in the lines. It's unnatural. There were no lifeboats missing so we searched inside with torches, looking for the crew, but some of the men were growing uneasy. What if the crew and passengers had perished from disease, they said, or poisoning? Should we be breathing the air? Or what if someone had gone mad and murdered everyone on-board? What if the madman was still there, hiding? Someone even suggested alien abduction, but that's impossible.

"We began to get some idea of how long the ship had been floating around when we started leaving a trail of boot prints along the corridor. The dust was thick and undisturbed. Tables in the grand dining room were laid out with plates, cutlery and a festoon of cobwebs. In the passenger cabins, we found suitcases, clothes and personal belongings, all untouched. The crews quarters were the same. It was as if every soul onboard had suddenly ceased to exist, like the plot in a penny thriller.

"There was the Captain's logbook, of course, sitting there on his ancient desk in the dirt and webs, the last entry dated 1905, or 1906, something like that. I half expected to read a distress message, or a tale of the ships descent into madness before everyone vanished, and I was half right. That entry still haunts me to this day. _'Another passenger lost. The bizarre occurrences continue. I can no longer deny it; there is something evil aboard this ship. Nobody is safe.'_

"Naturally, I didn't want to alarm the men, so I gave the order to return to the_Karaboudjan_. But as we prepared to leave the Captain's quarters, our attention was caught by a heavy thud above us. The sort of thud that conjures only one possible image. I knew what it sounded like, and by the look in the faces of my men, caught in the torch beams, they were thinking it too. _A body_. We stood there, frozen, listening and waiting. Then we heard it, right over our heads. _Dragging_. And there were footsteps too. Measured footsteps as somebody or some_thing_ dragged a weighty object down the corridor to the passenger cabins. You can imagine how the hair began to rise on the back of my neck.

"My men looked petrified, and every fibre of my being was telling me to get off that forsaken vessel. But I couldn't. If there was somebody on-board, we had to investigate."

Tintin was absorbed in Haddock's story, picturing his dear friend in the inhospitable reaches of the Norwegian Sea, holding things together during the blackout, leading his men on a doomed search and rescue mission aboard the _Lady Polly_. Aboard a _ghost ship_. He wanted to interject and tell Haddock that he couldn't go and investigate the sinister noises, and that he and his men should get out of there. Run if they had to. But he simply listened.

Haddock filled and lit his pipe. "We went up there quietly, hearts hammering with dread at what we might find; a body bag, blood smeared along the floor, a knife-wielding psychopath. But the corridor was empty. The only sign of movement was our own footprints in the dust from earlier. Now, by this point, the men were more than a little on edge. And when the echo of a piano and singing began to float through that maze of a ship, the lads snapped. I couldn't tell if the music was coming from a gramophone, the grand piano in the dining hall, or from the depths of Davy Jones's locker itself. _'All right,'_ I said. _'We'll go. Keep together and make for the deck.'_

"But do you think a haunted ghost ship lets her passengers off that easily? Something had been feeding on our energy, draining the power in our batteries. We got as far as the stairs before our torches began to blink and dim. Then we found ourselves plunged into darkness for the second time that night. But this time we were far from the safe and familiar walls of the _Karaboudjan_. There was no trusty engineer below to restore power. Only the icy touch of evil all around us. And a voice, right beside my ear. A blood chilling, vicious hiss that I'll never forget. It said-"

"_Arghh!_" Nestor toppled backwards in fright as a deer unexpectedly bolted through their camp-site.

"Great snakes!" Tintin clutched his chest with a start. His heart was absolutely pounding. He glanced at Nestor who was on his back with his legs sticking up over the log, and felt a laugh threatening to break.

Calculus looked up from his book and glanced around. "Did somebody say something?"

"Blistering…" Captain got up and helped Tintin haul Nestor back onto his log seat. "That's typical, isn't it? Just when I was getting to the best part."

Nestor rubbed his backside. "Perhaps we could finish the ghost story another time, Sir? As enjoyable as it's been, I think I'll clear up the plates and turn in."

"That's fine, Nestor," Haddock replied. "It's getting late, after all. And don't worry about the plates, you're on holiday."

"If you insist, Master Haddock."

It wasn't long before Nestor and the professor had retired to their tents, leaving Tintin and Haddock to tidy up. It wouldn't do to attract any animals to the campsite during the night, so Snowy ate all the scraps and Tintin washed out the pans. The last task was to put out the fire which Haddock managed to do without causing any sudden explosions. He dumped the container of water over the flames and they turned in for the night.

"Oh-ho, they're excellent these two-man tents," Haddock remarked as he squeezed in through the opening.

Tintin was already inside, getting comfortable with his head on a pillow. "That's funny. You seem awfully happy for someone who hates the great outdoors."

Haddock sealed the zipper after Snowy and turned to Tintin with a smile. "I don't hate it," he waved the idea away, then lowered his voice. "But you know I'd do anything to spend the night alone with you."

Tintin smiled back, but sighed. "Don't you think it looks a bit suspicious, our sudden fixation with camping? Nestor is bound to realise..."

"Oh, let them guess about our secret love affair." Haddock slipped under the sleeping bags that had been joined by the zip to make one large cover. He spooned up behind his boy, draping an arm over his hip.

Tintin relaxed into him, content. "Well, I'm certainly glad I don't have to sleep alone after tonight's entertainment."

"Why? Did I get your heart racing?" Haddock teased.

The Captain's beard was soft, but pleasantly prickly as it brushed Tintin's ticklish neck. He let a snigger escape and turned over, facing his lover to softly answer. "You always do, Captain. You always do."


End file.
